Section 21

21. How then does the universal Intellect produce the
particulars while, in virtue of its Reason-Principle, remaining a
unity? In other words, how do the various grades of Being, as we
call them, arise from the four primaries? Here is this great, this
infinite Intellect, not given to idle utterance but to sheer
intellection, all-embracing, integral, no part, no
individual: how, we
ask, can it possibly be the source of all this plurality?

Number at all events it possesses in the objects of its
contemplation: it is thus one and many, and the many are powers,
wonderful powers, not weak but, being pure, supremely great
and, so to
speak, full to overflowing powers in very truth, knowing no limit,
so that they are infinite, infinity, Magnitude-Absolute.

As we survey this Magnitude with the beauty of Being
within it and
the glory and light around it, all contained in Intellect, we see,
simultaneously, Quality already in bloom, and along with the
continuity of its Act we catch a glimpse of Magnitude at Rest. Then,
with one, two and three in Intellect, Magnitude appears as of three
dimensions, with Quantity entire. Quantity thus given and Quality,
both merging into one and, we may almost say, becoming one, there is
at once shape. Difference slips in to divide both Quantity and
Quality, and so we have variations in shape and differences of
Quality. Identity, coming in with Difference, creates equality,
Difference meanwhile introducing into Quantity inequality, whether
in number or in magnitude: thus are produced circles and squares,
and irregular figures, with number like and unlike, odd and even.

The life of Intellect is intelligent, and its activity [Act] has
no failing-point: hence it excludes none of the constituents we have
discovered within it, each one of which we now see as an
intellectual function, and all of them possessed by virtue of its
distinctive power and in the mode appropriate to Intellect.

But though Intellect possesses them all by way of
thought, this is
not discursive thought: nothing it lacks that is capable of
serving as
Reason-Principle, while it may itself be regarded as one great and
perfect Reason-Principle, holding all the Principles as one and
proceeding from its own Primaries, or rather having eternally
proceeded, so that "proceeding" is never true of it. It is a
universal
rule that whatever reasoning discovers to exist in Nature is to be
found in Intellect apart from all ratiocination: we conclude that
Being has so created Intellect that its reasoning is after a mode
similar to that of the Principles which produce living
beings; for the
Reason-Principles, prior to reasoning though they are, act
invariably in the manner which the most careful reasoning would
adopt in order to attain the best results.

What conditions, then, are we to think of as existing in that
realm which is prior to Nature and transcends the Principles of
Nature? In a sphere in which Substance is not distinct from
Intellect,
and neither Being nor Intellect is of alien origin, it is
obvious that
Being is best served by the domination of Intellect, so that Being
is what Intellect wills and is: thus alone can it be authentic and
primary Being; for if Being is to be in any sense derived, its
derivation must be from Intellect.

Being, thus, exhibits every shape and every quality; it is not
seen as a thing determined by some one particular quality;
there could
not be one only, since the principle of Difference is there;
and since
Identity is equally there, it must be simultaneously one and
many. And
so Being is; such it always was: unity-with-plurality appears in all
its species, as witness all the variations of magnitude, shape and
quality. Clearly nothing may legitimately be excluded [from Being],
for the whole must be complete in the higher sphere which,
otherwise, would not be the whole.

Life, too, burst upon Being, or rather was inseparably bound up
with it; and thus it was that all living things of necessity came to
be. Body too was there, since Matter and Quality were present.

Everything exists forever, unfailing, involved by very existence
in eternity. Individuals have their separate entities, but are at
one in the [total] unity. The complex, so to speak, of them all,
thus combined, is Intellect; and Intellect, holding all existence
within itself, is a complete living being, and the essential Idea of
Living Being. In so far as Intellect submits to contemplation by its
derivative, becoming an Intelligible, it gives that derivative the
right also to be called "living being."